A dried-up 4-acre pond, a village of 800, ninety days of shramdaan, and a ₹3.2 lakh Gram Panchayat grant. This is the plan, the weekly targets, and the mistakes we made.
The pond had been dry for six years. Every summer we spent ₹800–₹1,200 per household on tanker water. Reviving it was not a policy question; it was a mathematics question. The pond, at full capacity, held 22,000 cubic metres. That is roughly the annual drinking water need of 800 people.
Weeks 1–2: measurement and planning. Depth, silt volume, catchment area, monsoon inflow estimate. We used the Jal Shakti Abhiyan protocol — all documents are on jalshakti-dowr.gov.in.
Weeks 3–6: silt removal. We rented one JCB for four days (₹42,000) and organised village shramdaan for the rest. 4,200 tractor loads of silt — given free to farmers as topsoil.
Weeks 7–8: bund reinforcement. This is where we made our biggest mistake. Our first bund cracked after the first rain because we did not properly compact it. We rebuilt with a mechanical roller. Lesson: never skip compaction.
Weeks 9–12: catchment restoration. Contour trenches and check dams on the two feeder streams. ₹1.8 lakh from MGNREGA.
The pond filled to 60% capacity in the first monsoon. Two years later, drinking water tanker cost is zero.